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YESTERDAY 
and TODAY 



Being a story 
by word and 
by picture of 
the City of 
Bay City and 
two of the lead- 
ing institu- 
tions thereof 



Ov«V^>^''ii } ^^OUVN-^OLv^ 



THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK 

and 

THE BAY COUNTY SAVINGS BANK 

CENTER AND WASHINGTON AVES. 
BAY CITY, MICHIGAN 






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\ 29 1916/ 
>CI.A4;3182:J 



Copyright 1916 
The Bay County Savings Bank 



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French traveler and writer, De 
Tocqueville, who visited the 
United States in 1831 to secure 
material for his work, "Demo- 
cracy in America," came to 
the Saginaw Valley, then the 
"far west," and there is no more pro- 
phetic utterance in his whole work than 
this paragraph referring to the territory of 
which Bay City now forms an important 
part: "In a few years these impenetrable 
forests will have fallen; the sons of civiliza- 
tion will break the silence of the Saginaw; 
the banks will be imprisoned by quays; its 
current, which now flows on unnoticed and 
tranquil through a nameless waste, will be 
stemmed by the prow of vessels. We are, 
perhaps, the last travellers allowed to see 
the primitive grandeur of this solitude." 




NAU-QUA-CHIC-A-MING 

Head Chief of the Chippewa 
Indians 




E Tocqueville's visit was in 
the days of thie trapper and the 
fur trader. The most authentic 
annals state that nearly forty 
years before, the first white man 
had visited this section in quest 
of the wealth of furs with which 
the land abounded. And for a generation 
after he came the trapper and trader were 
predominant. To them the vast forests, 
which later formed the basis of immense 
fortunes, meant nothing except that they 
furnished a home for the fur-bearing ani- 
mals which they sought. That they had 
no vision of the future is best seen in the 
fact that while many amassed wealth in 
those days, the names of none of the ear- 
liest comers to Bay City are connected in- 
delibly with the lumber industry. And 
the early lumbermen, the pine barons, so- 
called, have left their imprint upon the 
city the same as did, the fur traders, but 
many of them failed to peer deeply into 
the future, and when the forests were de- 
pleted of their pine trees, transferred their 
activities to other lands where primeval 
forests still awaited the woodsman. 




BAY CITY'S OLDEST HOUSE 

Still standing at Twenty-fourth and Water Streets 




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BAY CITY IN 1837 



BAY CITY, as now constituted, is the outgrowth of numerous 
little settlements along both sides of the Saginaw river. The 
first grew up about the trading posts. Then came the first land 
speculators, and in 1836 the village of Portsmouth was platted; 
a year or two later a small saw-mill was built and the first lumber 
sawed here, but the mill was erected solely with the idea of sup- 
plying the local demand, as settlers were beginning to come in, 
the fur-trading and the fishing industry furnishing a means of 
livelihood for the residents. The village of Lower Saginaw, 
which later became Bay City, was laid out by a company com- 
posed chiefly of Detroit capitalists, in 1837. They had pur- 
chased what was known as the John Riley Reserve and platted 
240 acres of it for their village. The boundaries were Woodside 
Avenue on the north, a line 100 feet east of Van Buren Street 
on the east, a line 400 feet south of Tenth Street on the south, 
and the river on the west. 




BAY CITY IN 1854 






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VIEW OF BAY CITY IN 1874 



THE promoters of Lower Saginaw planned to build docks 
and warehouses and to make Bay City a trading center for 
this section of the state. The first buildings were erected, and 
then financial blight struck the company and the new town lan- 
guished for several years. It was not until 1844 that the settle- 
ment made a real start in the manufacture of pine lumber, the 
industry which later was to make it world famous, and then, 
having built up a city, was to die out as had that of the fur trap- 
per and fur trader. James McCormick in that year built a mill 
at Portsmouth, and James Fraser and Cromwell Barnes built 
one at Kawkawlin. Even these early lumbermen had no vision 
of the great future and the immense fortunes which would be ac- 
cumulated from the pine forests. 

Gradually other mills were constructed, the first one in 
Lower Saginaw being located on what is now the Gates property, 
just south of Wenonah Park. From about 1848 to 1865, how- 
ever, there was a rapid development in operations, and in that 
year there were twenty-four mills which cut an aggregate of 
116,500,000 feet of lumber. 




N the meantime mills had been 
constructed in Banks, Wenona, 
Salzburg and down the river, 
below what was the original 
boundary of Lower Saginaw, 
and about each of these mills 
there grew up neighborhoods 
which later were consolidated into Bay 
City on the east side of the river, and 
West Bay City on the west side, and the 
two in 1905 became one united city after 
several previous half-hearted efTorts at 
consolidation failed. 

With the growth of the lumber busi- 
ness there was also developed the manu- 
facture of salt, almost a twin industry with 
that of making lumber, for practically 
every mill-owner also had a salt block, 
while the few efforts at making salt without 
the accompaniment of a saw mill proved 
unprofitable. And when the mills went 
out of business the making of salt became 
almost a lost industry. 




FIRST HOME OF THE BAY COUNTY 

SAVINGS BANK 



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IN THE DAYS OF THE LUMBER BARONS 



THE population of the city increased with the growth of its 
lumber business. The saw mills and the logging camps 
brought the men who had learned the manufacture of lumber 
in the New England States and in Western New York, and the 
sturdy French-Canadians who helped to make a great deal of 
the early history of the city. With the growth of population 
came a demand for better school facilities, more churches, bet- 
ter government and the improvements of a well-to-do com- 
munity. 

The village of Bay City, which included a somewhat larger 
territory than the original plat of Lower Saginaw, was incorpor- 
porated in 1859, and the first city charter was adopted in 1865. 
In 1883 the village of Portsmouth was annexed to Bay City. The 
late Nathan B. Bradley was the city's first mayor. 

The rapid growth of the lumber business from the late 
50's soon brought a demand for banking facilities, and the first 
bank in Bay City was a private institution established in 1863 
by C. W. Gibson & Co., in a room in a frame structure on Water 
Street where, later, the Campbell House was erected. 












VIEW OF CENTER STREET, 1874. /\ LOCATION OF FIRST NATIONAL BANK 




COURT HOUSE 



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OLD DAYS ON THE SAGINAW RIVER 



IT was known as the Bay Bank, but a year later the First 
National Bank was organized by Mr. Gibson and four others, 
took over the business of the Bay Bank, and the bank moved 
into a building erected especially for it by James Fraser. There 
were six stockholders in the bank, Chauncey W. Gibson, Chas. 
D. Gibson, Thornton W. Gibson, Robert L. Warren, Henry 
Benson and Harvey I. Clark. The bank had a capital of 
$50,000. 

The organization of this bank was the beginning of a his- 
tory of financial success which kept pace with the growth of the 
city and the development of new enterprises, and which, too, 
reflected that period in the history of Bay City when for a time 
there were a few pessimists who were willing to believe that its 
sole foundation was sawdust and that, with the pine forests gone 
and the hey-day of the lumber business passed away, there 
would be no recovery industrially, and the city would drop back 
to the standing of a country village. 





P to that time there had been 
little or no individual develop- 
ment except such as was incident 
to the lumber business. The 
machine shops had been operat- 
ed chiefly to take care of the 
business of the saw-mills; the big 
stores depended largely upon the trade 
which came to them through the lumber 
camps, and the scores of vessels which 
plied the lakes with lumber from Bay City; 
shipyards which had growm up through the 
necessity of providing vessels for this traf- 
fic, languished. There were no coal mines 
and there were no sugar factories. 

Some of the men who had made their 
fortunes out of the forests tributary to Bay 
City, aided by the brawn of its inhabitants, 
sought new virgin forests to denude so as 
to add to those fortunes. Their vision was 
not much broader than that of the trappers 
who left when the lumbermen came. They 
could see no future, excepting in lumber. 
But there were others who remained be- 
hind and helped build a new city, a city 
not founded on sawdust and slabs. 



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CITY HALL 



THEY turned to new industries and have helped to found 
what is really a new city, no longer dependent upon a 
single industry for its livelihood, but one which has few equals in 
the country for the variety of its manufacturing institutions ; one 
which still has many natural resources at its command, and one 
whose people have a vision of the future which makes them be- 
lieve in Bay City. 

During all these years there had been developing about 
the city one of the world's oldest and its greatest of industries — 
the tilling of the soil. Bay County farming was given a wonder- 
ful impetus by the early adopting of a system of good roads, 
which enabled the farmer to haul crops to market easily, and 
then came the sugar beet and chicory industry, which marked 
the beginning of an epoch of prosperity never before experienced 
by farmers in this vicinity. Today Bay City is the center of the 
beet sugar industry of the United States ; the chief point in the 
growing and preparing of chicory for the market, and in addition 
the marketing place for the richest truck farming land in the 
entire state. Her growth commercially and financially since the 
days of the saw-mill and the lumber camp has exceeded the best 
years of the old period, and it has been on a permanent basis — 
an upbuilding instead of that tearing down which must be the 
only result of the using up of those resources which it takes 
nature many decades to produce. 



THE First National Bank developed and grew rapidly, and 
in 1872 purchased the property at the corner of Center and 
Washington Avenues, where it erected what was then a very 
modern banking building. The bank had paid dividends and 
added to its surplus almost from the first year of its organization, 
and its capital stock was increased five times in the first ten years, 
reaching $400,000 in 1873. In 1877 the capital was reduced to 
$250,000. The bank paid regular annual dividends up to the 
close of its charter in 1884, these dividends amounting to 
$427,000. A new bank w^as organized at that time to succeed 
the First National, and it was named the Bay National. The 
new bank was composed largely of the stockholders of the old 
institution, and continued the business practically unchanged. 
From that time on its prosperity has been continual, and in ad- 
dition to paying regular dividends, it built up a surplus of 
$200,000. 




HE years 1914-15 brought about 
great changes in Bay City bank- 
ing institutions in the way of con- 
solidation and the increase of 
capital stocks, greatly strengthen- 
ing them and enabling them to 
handle business on a scale com- 
mensurate with the growth of the big com- 
mercial and manufacturing institutions of 
the city. The capital of the First National 
Bank was increased to $200,000, giving it, 
with its surplus and undivided profits, a 
working capital of considerably over 
$400,000. At the same time arrangements 
were made for a joint ownership of the 
First National and the Bay County Sav- 
ings banks, each bank having the same 
directors and the same stockholders. 




SPECIAL PASS BOOK 



FOR the last five years or so the First National Bank ranked 
high on the honor roll of the National Banks of Michigan, 
and in 1914 had the honor of ranking first. 

With the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank, 
they were one of the first to join the system, making application 
to do a trust business as well. They are now equipped to do the 
largest complete banking business in the Saginaw Valley, having 
a commercial, savings, bond and safe deposit departments. 

The Bay County Savings Bank was organized in 1884, 
many of the stockholders of the First National Bank subscribing 
for stock in the new venture, and Alexander Folsom, a director 
of the First National, becoming president of the new bank, while 
John Mulholland, for many years connected with the First 
National Bank, was its first treasurer and remained in that posi- 
tion until his death. 

The new bank started with a capital of $50,000. Quarters 
on Washington Avenue in the rear of the Central Block, were 
fitted out for the new financial institution. When the Phoenix 
Block was constructed, the Bay County Savings Bank moved to 
offices especially fitted out for it, on the second floor of the 
building, and it remained there, doing a highly successful busi- 
ness. In 1905, the bank moved to the Bijou Block, adjoining 
the Phoenix Block. 



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.11.1 i^ „l I I M f . 1 U , l i„t,l I i t I ( I I I U i H H I I I I I I I i I II I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I H ,l i , I I 1 l -J — U^ j I 1 , 







ITH the period of expansion which 
the financial institutions of Bay 
City experienced in 1914-15, the 
Bay County Savings bank pur- 
chased all the assets of the Lum- 
berman's State Bank, which had 
been organized as the Bank of 
Wenona in 1872, a private bank owned by 
H. H. Norrington and John S. Taylor, and 
became a state bank with a capital of 
350,000 soon after. With the purchase of 
the assets of the Lumberman's Bank the 
Bay County Savings Bank secured a largely 
increased volume of business, including 
branch banks on Kosciuszko avenue and in 
Salzburg, while the business of the Lumber- 
man's State Bank was continued as the 
west side office of the Bay County Savings 
Bank. It had previously established a 
South End branch on Broadway, and the 
change gave it four flourishing branches. 

In the expansion it necessitated the 
establishment of new systems and methods, 
hence was added to the large commercial 
and savings departments a real estate and 
rural credit department, specializing in 
rural credits and mortgage loans. This, 
together with the Safe Deposit Department 
and Christmas Savings Clubs, the latter 
two being originated and operated for sev- 
eral years exclusively by this bank, tend to 
make up the excellent banking facilities 
that are offered to our customers. 



MIDLAND STREET OFFICE 




VIEW FROM THE MEZZANINE 




BROADWAY BRANCH 




T was decided in 1915 between 
the leading stockholders of the 
First National Bank and the Bay 
County Savings Bank to merge 
the ownership, continuing the 
banks in their original capacities, 
one as a national and the other as 
a state institution, but each having the 
same board of directors and the same 
officers, while each stock certificate re- 
presented a proportionate share in the 
stock of each bank. 

Coincident with this consolidation of 
stock ownership of the banks, plans were 
matured for the construction of a suitable 
banking house which would house both 
institutions. 

Coincident with the plans for the joint 
ownership of the First National Bank and 
the Bay County Savings Bank, the direct- 
ors took up the subject of providing a suit- 
able banking house for the two institutions, 
and finally accepted plans for an exclusive 
banking building to be erected on the site 
which had been so long occupied b}' the 
First National Bank and adjoining property 
which was purchased for the new building. 




SALZBURG BRANCH 




BAY COUNTY SAVINGS BANK 




POLISH BRANCH 










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ONTRACTS for this building 
were awarded in the summer of 
1915, and on May 22, 1916, the 
two banks opened their new of- 
fices. 

The new building covers a 
lot with a frontage of S?}/^ feet 
on Center avenue and 79 feet on Washing- 
ton avenue. The architecture is of the 
Ionic order and the material of the exterior 
is white Bedford stone. 

The bank is entered through revolving 
doors, and once inside, one is impressed by 
the quiet beaut}- of the place. The coun- 
ters are constructed of Italian Botticinni 
marble, with the grills at the various coun- 
ters made of bronze. The high, arched 
ceilings and long windows give an abun- 
dance of light in the daytime, and the light- 
ing plan for the evening is equally as effi- 
cient. 

Back of this vault, with an entrance 
through a small corridor at the right, 
is the safety deposit vault, guarded by a 
ten-ton door and containing 396 steel depos- 
it boxes of various sizes, each box double 
locked. Convenient to the entrance to the 
deposit vault are three coupon rooms and a 
consultine room. 



LOCATION OF THE 
BAY COUNTY SAVINGS BANK 

1886 




FIRST NATIONAL BANK 




SAFETY DEPOSIT VAULT 




TEEL fire-proof filing cases and 
working desks are provide'd 
throughout the building for the 
use of tellers, bookkeepers and 
other employes. 

A second story is constructed 
over the vault, and on the right 
of this is the directors' room, finished in 
American walnut, overlooking the main 
corridor through a glass-paneled door, with 
large windows opening on Washington 
avenue, while at the left is a convenient 
room for the use of the Bay City Clearing 
House. 

The building is supplied continuously 
with pure washed air, by means of a Sirocco 
ventilating system located on the third floor 
at the rear, while document vaults, toilet 
rooms and the heating plant are located in 
the basement. 

Every feature of the building, in addi- 
tion to its beauty, gives the impression of 
strength and solidity found in few banking 
houses, and certainl}^ excelled by none in 
Michigan. 




THE PRESIDENT'S OFFICE 




THE DIRECTORS ROOM 




SIROCCO VENTILATING SYSTEM 






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12K.-TON STEEL DOOR TO MAIN VAULT 



THE offices of the First National Bank are on the right of the 
entrance, a door leading to the private office of the president, 
while the cashier's office is located close to the entrance and the 
counters of the tellers and bookkeepers range along the side of the 
building. 

A similar arrangement is made for the Bay County Savings 
Bank on the left of the entrance. 

A double compartment cash and securities vault, one com- 
partment for each bank, stands at the rear of the building, sep- 
arated from the lobby by glass partitions. It has a steel door of 
the most modern vault type, weighing 12}^ tons, while in each of 
the compartments in the interior are 14 burglar-proof chests. 



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THE NEW LOCATION OF FIRST NATIONAL BANK AND BAY COUNTY 
SAVINGS BANK 




THE GREGORY PRESS, 
Bay City, Mich. 

compiled by 
JAMES P. CRAVES 



